Since Spiceworks automatically converts a "typed URL" to a HTML link but not an embedded link, I was wondering if one of you many talented people could write a script to search the body of the helpdesk email for an embedded html/ftp/email link and "unembed" it? This way the links would work in the tickets...

The reason for this is that many of our "help tickets" are actually action-items sent to our Engineering department. These action-items include downloading (CAD) files from one of our many client's servers and often include HTML or FTP link in an email.

So whenever they forward this on to the Engineering department as a work request, the Designers/Engineers have to turn around and ask for the actual HTML address from the sender which is often challenging for some. This leads to questioning the practicality of using Spiceworks by both the person sending the ticket and the person working the ticket.

Spiceworks Helpdesk is to good of a tool to be thrown by the way side due to the its inability to provide clickable embedded links. Please help!

It does seem an easy step for those of us who are technical yet in my opinion we must design systems to work with the lowest common denominator when designing for user compliance (e.g. my mother-in-law)

I have to take into consideration the users wide extent of age, training and experience using computers and make it as simple as possible.

Also, we are a very large firm with hundreds of requests coming in daily. Who wants to train/police users copy-and-pasting instructions. Its bad enough currently having to respond to each ticket and ask them for the URL link (and then having them to call you and ask how to do it). The idea of Spiceworks is to have less work, not more.

I understand where you are coming from (making things easier) - Obviously, this is not an issue to the great majority of people who use Spiceworks, so you are, I'm afraid, in the minority.

But, a little bit of training goes a long way.

There is, I believe a limitation here with the system. The comments, etc. are stored as plain-text with no formatting. I suspect that a feature like this would require Spiceworks to embrace a RTF mode of operation - - which I've submitted as a feature request myself, which would allow bulleted/numbered lists, bold, italic formatting, and linkable text.

As it stands, in the end, your email client is really what converts anything that looks like a URL to a clickable link. So, right now what you ask is not possible without the submitting user paste the actual URL into the help desk ticket.

As for Spiceworks, something would have to be written that would be able to translate linked text as it was brought into the system, whether by portal or email...I don't believe that we have that level of access with regards to plugin creation.

In the end, I think this requires RTF editing for message and comment text fields.

The only thing I can think of is if you submitted your emails through an SMTP server - that should separate out your text strings and links...much like viewing an HTML formatted email on a BlackBerry (prior to 4.1.6!)

But...when on that thread, I found this (would require changing your incoming mail settings to IMAP or POP):

If your application is getting mail from a specific mailbox using POP3 or IMAP, you can configure the mailbox's POP3/IMAP settings so that Exchange serves plain text only, regardless of the format of messages in the mailbox.

I haven't worked on Exchange 2003 in quite a while, nor do I have access to a 2003 server, so I can't give you the exact place to look, but if you view the mailbox properties using AD Users & Computers on the Exchange server, it shouldn't be too hard to spot.

Update: after a bit of searching, I managed to find the location of the setting I was thinking of.

On your Exchange Server, open AD Users & Computers, it should be under Start/All Programs/Microsoft Exchange.

Find the relevant mailbox used by your application and open it's properties page.